Popular Outdoor & Landscape Lighting Ideas

Lighting Placement Terms

There is so much that you can do with lighting by tinkering with the type of lighting as well as the placement. Whether you want to emphasize certain aspects of your building’s architecture, highlight fixtures, or shed light across a wide area, the placement of the lighting matters. Here are the most common terms for lighting placement:

General Lighting: Illuminates a large area of the property with floodlights or hanging lights. High powered lighting.

Spotlighting: Emphasize certain features of your landscape. Medium powered lighting. Spotlights can be used for

• Highlighting: Placed at the base of an outdoor feature
• Silhouetting: Placed behind the feature and toward a close wall
• Shadowing: Placed at the base of the feature and against a close wall
• Downlighting: Fixed in an eave, trellis, or hardscape and pointed downward
• Moonlighting: Fixed high in a tree and angled downward

Path lighting: Illuminate walkways and the driveway for safety, security, and ambiance. Multiple, low-powered lighting often LED lighting. Can be elevated lights or in-grade.

In short, you can break down outdoor and landscape lighting into three categories. General lighting brightens a large area of the property. Accent lighting highlights particular architectural and landscape features. Path lighting is practical like general lighting but has aesthetic appeal like accent lighting.

Security Lighting

Outdoor and landscape lighting is about security and safety just as it is about visibility and aesthetics. Motion sensing lights, for instance, can scare away would-be intruders. These can be adjusted to sense a certain degree of motion at a particular distance. They can also be attuned to stay lit for a specific duration once activated.

Powering the Lights

There are three main ways to power the outdoor and landscape lighting. Low voltage lighting operates at 12 volts or less. This option is energy efficient and easy to install. Line voltage, meanwhile, operates at 120 volts and requires electrical conduits, thick electrical wiring, and junction boxes. As you can imagine, it involves a lot of electrical work. Finally, there’s solar powered lighting which requires no wiring, but placement is crucial. They need lots of sunlight.

Hire an Electrician

If you are planning to employ line voltage or even low voltage lighting, then consider consulting with a certified electrician first. The electricians at Mr. Electric of Dallas can work with you to optimize the placement of the wiring, conduits, and junction boxes for efficiency and safety.